Call for mandatory reporting of errors

The PSA and patient safety advocates like Melissa are pushing for a change in Australian laws that would require pharmacists to report mistakes they’ve made when dispensing medicine.

In Ms Sheldrick’s home province of Ontario, Canada her advocacy has led to these laws being introduced and she said it was some comfort knowing that will be Andrew’s legacy.

She will speak at the PSA’s national conference in Sydney this weekend and said mandatory reporting wasn’t about blaming pharmacists.

Melissa says she wants answers, not someone to blame.

“It is absolutely about learning. We don’t know what we don’t know,” she said.

“We need to collect the data to be able to see where the mistakes are happening, how they’re happening.

“It’s not about who did it. It’s about how it has happened and what can we do to prevent it from happening again.”

Ms Wood echoed the sentiment, saying she accepted humans made mistakes but it was a system-wide issue that needed to be fixed.

“Medication errors can happen at the point of prescribing, at the point of dispensing, and even at the point of administration,” she said.

“What we really want to see happen here is continuous quality improvement and learning from the mistakes and the near misses that are happening so that we can reduce the number of medication errors.

“What our pharmacists are telling us is they really do want to be able to enact the changes required, but that’s going to require some workforce change and that requires resourcing.”

PSA’s research also found 98 per cent of aged care residents have at least one medication-related problem, and more than half are exposed to at least one potentially inappropriate medicine.

They are calling for pharmacists to be integrated into aged-care facilities, and greater input from the federal government.

“We’ve called for medicine safety to be declared a national health priority area,” Ms Wood said.

Federal Health Minister Greg Hunt will address PSA’s conference on Friday and is expected to outline the Government’s plans to improve medication management.

“Medication management is of fundamental importance, and the government is committed to working with doctors, pharmacists and other healthcare professionals to improve medication management, medicine adherence and addressing avoidable hospital admissions related to medication misadventure,” a spokesperson for Mr Hunt said.